


The Sin Graveyard

by alanxna, clairelutra



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/M, beware of lapslock, writing process included
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:55:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28911918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanxna/pseuds/alanxna, https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairelutra/pseuds/clairelutra
Summary: The sin graveyard, wherein the author posts PWP/smut-heavy WIPs she's officially given up on, with sketches of what was supposed to happen and an explanation for why it was abandoned, uploaded to our dear AO3 for the sake of accurately representing the sheer number of words she writes, dammit.All are Daine/Numair; all range in rating from hard T to E; some but not all are underage. See initial note for index. The SFW-only graveyard can be foundhere.
Relationships: Numair Salmalín/Veralidaine Sarrasri
Comments: 56
Kudos: 31





	1. very, very bad

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. very, very bad — Numair, on his directly post-canon relationship with Daine. (canon-compliant) (non-explicit underage)  
> 2\. sex pollen take #1 — Daine, Numair, and a field full of situationally aphrodisiac flowers. What could possibly go wrong? (no established relationship AU) (underage; dubcon)  
> 3\. goddess says ladies come first — Numair's nerdery leads him and Daine into an ancient temple to the Mother Goddess. Unfortunately, getting out is a bit more complicated. (no established relationship AU)  
> 4\. sex tutoring take #1 — "increasingly transparent attempts to deny that platonic sex-tutoring is actually just sex" (canon divergence/no immortals war AU) (underage)  
> 5\. Scrapped ending for [excuses, excuses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29516748). (modern AU) (implied underage)  
> 6\. canonverse vampirism — AU where everything is the same except Numair is a vampire and blood drinking is hella sexual. (canonverse AU/no established relationship AU) (underage)  
> 7\. ritual sex — "Character's Magical Powers Are Kept in Check with Institutionalised Sex Ritual" (canonverse-ish AU)  
> 8\. BDSMverse — Daine's mentor doesn't want to be submitted to. Ever. That's... fine, she guesses. (canon + BDSMverse AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Numair, on his directly post-canon relationship with Daine. (canon-compliant) (non-explicit underage)

It was two weeks after the war that Numair started to realize that he maybe, sort of, possibly, _slightly_ miscalculated.

Daine had always been a quick learner in any subject she put her mind to. It had been hard to remember to stop in those early days of her lessons when she was so _eager_ for anything and everything he could tell her. It had made him wistful at times; she would have gotten so much out of University of Carthak's library, and even more out of Lindhall and Sebo's guidance, if only the time and place and circumstance had been a little different.

He hadn't accounted for the possibility that _he_ might be a subject she would put her mind to.

It wasn't like he didn't know how enjoyable it was to learn a new lover, but for some reason, he hadn't connected her speed in memorizing taxonomic ranks to her speed in figuring out that if she dragged her nails up that spot below his nape and hummed into his mouth while shifting her hips against his, she'd wipe his mind clean as a slate.

Intimacy with Daine was something that he'd wanted (craved) for longer than he necessarily wanted to think about, but first it had been something he hadn't let himself acknowledge, and then it had been something he _had_ acknowledged and desperately repressed, and then it had become a fact of life, a low hum of _wantwantwant_ that spiked and dropped and _spiked_ in the brutal pace of the war.

They weren't at war anymore. With both of their affections out in the open, he had no reason to bury how much he _wanted_ anymore, either. Now Daine shared his bed so often that he felt a little lonely when he woke up without a collection of warm, furry bodies trapping him in his bedding, whether or not Daine had already risen for the day.

Perhaps the biggest thing he'd miscalculated was just how much the war had worn him down.

As it turned out, getting the time to rest and recover meant that he, well, recovered. Felt better. Healthier. More energetic.

Libido included.

Gods above, she was _distracting._

It wasn't like he'd ever _not_ been aware of her (the more he let himself think about it, the more he realized that maybe, _maybe_ he should have seen this coming), but a corner of his mind keeping track of where she was and what state she was in wasn't anything close to needing to kick her out of the library when he was doing research or else he'd spend the hours just looking at her and _wanting._

His friends were somewhere between amused and bemused at the hard shift in their relationship. Daine would deliver refreshments when he was going over reports with Jon, trailing fingers over his arm and flashing him that _smile_ as she left, and he'd spend the next several seconds tingling goosebumps all over and struggling to remember his _name,_ never mind the reports, while Jon raised an eyebrow at him and waited for him to recover.

 _The honeymoon stage,_ Jon had said wisely, carefully _not_ laughing, and Numair had decided not to mention that he was still working on that bit.

( _Maybe someday, but only if you’re very, very good._

_What if I’m very, very bad?_

_Still maybe someday._ )

[not the end, just hit ?????-land]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look i'm not saying i blush _every_ time i read that last little exchange, but. like. often _enough_.
> 
> abandoned this mostly because i ran out of steam tbh. i really needed the words to work in One Specific Way and they fought me like heeeeell. definitely not _entirely_ done with trying to write the concept (because _if you need me i'll be in my bunk_ glsadkj), and i have other ideas for super early relationship canon-compliant!d/n smut, but it's been months since i've done anything with (or even thought about) this one, so! a proper burial, it deserves.


	2. sex pollen take #1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daine, Numair, and a field full of situationally aphrodisiac flowers. What could possibly go wrong? (no established relationship AU) (underage; dubcon)

It was a lovely day in late April, almost a year after the Immortals War, that saw Daine and Numair gathering venerem flowers from a field along Tortall's southern coast. Daine had been accompanying Numair on a trip to his home country when her friend had remembered the field and the flowers it held and insisted on a detour. Apparently, the flowers were extremely rare and useful in a variety of niche spellwork—which Numair had informed her of in boyish delight, his dark eyes alight, then gone on to list as many of those workings as she'd let him.

Daine didn't mind. It was so _nice_ to have a reason to travel with him that didn't involve rushing to help with some crisis or another. Between the war and the cleanup, those happy days of studying on the road had felt like a lifetime or three away.

"Oh, by the way," said Numair, about half an hour after the two of them had started collecting the flowers in question, "try not to inhale the pollen."

Daine, who had nearly buried her face in the blossoms trying to identify their strange scent, pulled back with a jerk. She eyed down the pale pink lilyish flowers. They _looked_ harmless enough. "Why?" she inquired cautiously.

"Venerem pollen is a stimulant," he explained, crouching by a cluster of them and inspecting the stems. "Breathe too much and you'll have trouble sleeping tonight."

Daine sighed (he _would_ forget to mention something like that), then shifted uncomfortably. The faint twinge in her abdomen that had been responding to the flora had grown into a quiet, empty ache. It didn't tell of a hunger for food, exactly, but...

"That's what makes it such an excellent ingredient for alertness potions," he went on, selecting one stalk to add to his bundle. He stood in one smooth motion, all grace and strength, the seam of his shirt pulling _tight_ over the round of his shoulder for one glorious moment. "It doesn't work like coffee or tea. There's no risk of lingering fatigue in the aftermath, it's much easier to control the longevity of the effect, there's a lower chance of addiction, and so on. It's a shame it's so difficult to gather."

"Difficult?" Daine prompted thoughtlessly. His voice was the _best_ kind of distracting; she was finding it harder and harder to search for the correct flowers with it in her ears.

He flashed her a smile, and the ensuing burst of butterflies in her stomach was much stronger than it ever had been before. "Not only is it difficult to grow, but the potency is at its height only for the week before Beltane, and it needs to be prepared immediately. I'll need to start working as soon as we get back to camp."

She hummed acknowledgement, the noise fluttering and gutting oddly in her throat, then did her best to focus on gathering.

* * *

Her knees felt watery by the time Numair was satisfied with their haul, but she managed the walk back to camp well enough, though her underthings rubbed against her with her every movement.

"History suggests that they weren't always so finicky," Numair said, apropos of nothing, as they arrived, setting their bundles down by the fire pit and crouching by their packs while Daine sank weakly onto her bedroll. He pulled out a length of cloth and a pocketknife, then set about removing the bases of the flowers with deft, sure movements. "Lots of scholars suspect that there were immortals involved in their care and keeping, because their vitality trailed off after the barrier went up. Before that, they were involved in many Beltane rituals around the world—they function as an aphrodisiac in certain contexts, actually."

"Aphro-what?" Daine rasped, latching onto the word she didn't yet know in an effort to focus—oh, but she _loved_ his voice, stroking down her spine in that way. It was almost a physical touch.

"Ah, well," he faltered, embarrassed. "A sexual stimulant."

...Ah.

(The way his voice curled around the word 'sexual' had her gut clenching and her breasts tingling, some instinct-driven corner of her brain insisting on connecting 'Numair' with 'mating' and 'family' and 'motherhood', where normally it would have her squirming in her seat and trying not to think too much about sex as a concept.

The irony that the word had been used to explain the unreasonable intensity of her reaction did not escape her.)

He waved the knife he was using to behead the flowers. "Only when harvested during the week before the Spring Equinox. They were burned in the Beltane fires, to set the mood, so to speak. They're more powerful when fresh, but the range of people they effect is much more limited, and cause women to become temporarily infecund if they're exposed to high enough doses, which, needless to say, runs counter to the spirit of Beltane. Heating the pollen breaks down the magic properties that cause infertility and disperses the aphrodisiac in the smoke, which is where the tradition of jumping over the embers came from. That said, the fresh ones seemed to have been popular in courting gifts, even in the off season—a gift of a single blooming venerem stalk was common a gesture of intent in many cultures B.H.E., especially around southern Maren, Tyra, and southern Tortall."

Daine hazily wondered how much _intent_ the bundle Numair had her gather added up to, and her mind happily supplied her with heat-fogged fantasies of him burying himself inside her again and again in powerful thrusts, covering her with his body and groaning sweet nothings into her hair, and the ache in her abdomen _sang_ , the slippery wet space between her legs getting slipperier and wetter at the thought.

"You would think that it would make a good base for love potions," Numair went on, oblivious, steadily working through the blossoms and discarding the stems, "but like I say, its effect is limited. [more exposition]"

* * *

* * *

* * *

OUTLINE/ADDITIONAL NOTES/BRAINSTORMING:

\- none in particular tbh.  
\- numair has an _oh shit_ moment over realizing that he kinda led daine into this while daine grouses about it  
\- i chickened out of making it fuck-or-die sex pollen, so it's more fuck-or-suffer-for-10-hours sex pollen  
\- they do end up fucking anyway  
\- no idea how it ends, and that was definitely a big chunk of why i gave up on it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for the prompt '100 words of sex pollen', and typed directly into ao3, and then saved on a different site and forgotten for a few months, lmfao.
> 
> i asked brainbuddy (MaRuX) for a quick read on this one to ask if she thought the progression was weird and she said 'yea it's kinda weird' and i was like 'o shit thanks' and then went to sit on how to improve it and then... forgot :D;;; ~~and now that i'm rereading it, on a pure technical skill level, god do i agree~~
> 
> also i felt like a coward for not making it legit fuck-or-die and tried to brainstorm ways i could tweak the premise and i... half remember them. they will be listed in the morning. or in a few days. or when i remember. eventually!
> 
> TBA


	3. goddess says ladies come first

It was Numair's fault.

It was _entirely_ Numair's fault, and if they both made it out alive, he would find a way to repent _somehow._ Possibly with blood. Possibly with an arm. Possibly by becoming an eunuch.

It would only be fitting.

"Numair?"

Daine was eyeing him with mild trepidation as he analyzed the spells lacing the temple walls. He wasn't sure what his expression looked like, but he doubted that the best poker face in the world could save him here.

He'd known that a largely forgotten temple to the Great Mother Goddess resided between the Tusaine village they were returning from and the Tortallan border, so he, the absolute _dolt_ he was, had suggested they stop to explore, because a chance like this may never present itself again.

Daine, being her sweet, innocent, lovely, _trusting_ self, had agreed.

The good news was that they'd found it, and it was just as full of lost secrets and recherché workings as he could have hoped. He had memorized as much as he possibly could, but he was already composing the request he'd give Jon for permission to do a more thorough search, and possibly to take a few other mages to help him record the findings.

Or rather, he _had_ been.

The bad news was that the door had locked on them. Not the physical door (that one had no locks), but the web of complex magics that imbued every surface of the structure had snapped shut behind them. If they tried to leave now, they'd find themselves trapped in an endless maze of tunnels and passages, all of which would lead them right back to the altar.

The good news was that they weren't intended to be death traps, and there was a way to open them, and it wasn't keyed to any particular individual, race, lineage, or teaching—only to gender, specifically females. Theoretically, _any_ woman could open them, even a non-mage.

The _worse_ news was that the method of opening them was, well...

"...Numair?"

He couldn't bring himself to look at her.

He could feel her glancing between him and the innocuous (to her) wall. The shift in tension said that her trepidation was sliding into outright worry.

"What's wrong? Did you find the key?"

"I found _a_ key," he muttered, then sent a careful wave of power through the matrix, testing to see if he could circumvent said key and—no, nothing going. His magic was so incompatible with the workings that they may as well have been on separate planes of existence.

"Well?" she pressed when he didn't elaborate. "What is it?"

What indeed.

Texts that mentioned this location were rare. When he'd read that the priestesses of this particular complex had been 'depraved', he had dismissed it. The book had been written by a Gallan scholar in the first century of H.E., and by first century Gallan standards, 'depraved' religious practices usually meant that its practicians were not required to be entirely celibate. There hadn't been much in the other texts to contest that assumption, and he'd read most of what was available.

...Perhaps more of those texts could stand to mention that the temple was essentially powered by, well...

"Numair?"

...Sex.

"Um," he said, at the very height of eloquence. He still couldn't look at her. The indelible sweetness of her voice just made everything worse.

"Which of us needs to die?" she asked, the question genuine under the levity, and he sighed.

"Well... neither of us, unless you count—" he cut himself off. He couldn't say it. He _really_ couldn't say it. It wasn't often that he was hyperaware that Daine was a sixteen-year-old girl (more often now than before, granted, because—), but joking about something like this was just going far too far.

"Spit it out, then," she ordered, setting her hands on her hips in his peripheral vision. "The sooner you say what it is, the sooner we can figure it out."

( _—the sooner **we** can figure it out._

In context, the powerful surge of not-exclusively-platonic affection he felt in that moment was even more inappropriate than it usually was.)

He sighed again, trying to steel himself and knowing that nothing would be enough to prepare him to actually give voice to this. "You're familiar with the fertility rites of Beltane, yes?"

Her silence was profound. He could imagine the look she was giving him, and it didn't help.

"They were a tribute to the Great Mother Goddess originally," he said, trying to tap into that intellectual curiosity and _not_ into the vivid fantasy of skin and sweat and bone-searing heat, Daine gasping her pleasure into his ear in the name of a bountiful harvest in the coming year. "The, ah, second half of jumping over the embers was much more ritualized"—painting her belly and breasts with runes and burying himself inside of her, coaxing her over the edge as many times as it took for the energy of _them_ to spill into the atmosphere—"and by most accounts, much more effective."—Daine with child, _their_ child, drowsing in his arms, utterly content—"The formal version trailed off after the start of H.E., when the cultural tides shifted in the absence of immortals, and the Goddess's protection was more essential than her bounty. It remained a tradition"—Daine giggling into the hollow of his throat as they bedded down in a haystack, their bare bodies protected from the chaff by his robe spread out under them—"but her attention shifted elsewhere."

She hadn't interrupted him once, which was disconcerting enough to get him to chance a glance in her direction. Her eyes were as velvety blue as ever, lovely features set in an expression of mild interest and mild bemusement, apparently content to let him ramble himself to death—her form was lithe and pretty, gentle curves and pale skin—

Eunuch. _He was going to become an eunuch._

He looked away, shifting uncomfortably in place and grateful for his cloak. "Before that, similar rituals were much more common, for instance—"

"Numair."

_There we go._

He half-wished she'd let him get around to explaining the ones used in conjunction with dragon magic, because focusing on the ludicrousity of the positions required would be a... _slight_... relief from thinking about the entirely less formulaic method that this temple asked.

"The spells are keyed to..." he said, trailing off as he grappled with the question: was there _any_ way to put this? "Well, they're keyed to..." He waved a hand, wondering if he'd be smote if he strategically brained himself on the wall in front of him. "Certain kinds of... pleasure."

A silence fell as Daine took this in.

(As the images crowding into his mind took the form of her laid out on the altar, her face melting in sweetest surrender as the stone lit up around them, all trust and warmth and heat and intent, of her cheeks flushed and her eyes blank as she tipped over the edge—as he _pushed her_ over the edge with hands and mouth and—damn it. Damn it, damn it, _damn it._ )

"Oh," she said, carefully neutral, as he shifted again. Then, with slightly more life, "So, canoodling."

...He'd needed a bucket of ice water, and he'd gotten one.

If the Goddess herself were to smite him now, it would only be what he deserved.

"Yes," he was forced to concede, a truly vile taste in his mouth. "'Canoodling'."

( _Canoodling._ Childish, fumbling teenage experimentation, meaningless and inconsequential and so, so, so _young._ Of course that was what sex would be to her. Of course. She was _sixteen._ What else could it be, really.)

Her silence was more embarrassed than contemplative this time, and, desperate for a distraction, Numair sent another pulse of magic through the network, searching for the slightest crack. The working wouldn't have lasted this long if there was one, he knew, but still...

_Canoodling._

"Strictly, I'm irrelevant here," he mused as he searched. "The altar converts the... _release_ into power, but only when it comes from a woman. That may be why I can't touch the matrix; it was made with the Gift, I can tell, so I _should_ be able to work within it, but I keep slipping through." A thought struck him. "I wonder if Alanna's magic could..." He thought about bringing Alanna down here, then thought about the possible ramifications, then decided that his curiosity on this front could go forever unsated. "...Never mind."

It didn't stop him from wondering, though. Would the altar register a woman who had been Kyprioth-touched? Women who had been born in men's bodies fell under the Goddess's domain, but sexual gratification worked differently between the sexes—how much of the spellwork here relied on biology and how much of it relied on the soul? He was missing enough context that it wasn't immediately apparent within the web itself.

All fascinating questions that he would have loved to think about to the exclusion of all else, but Daine interrupted him with a soft, distant, _hup-to._

He looked up, and found that she had walked away, over to the altar, and hopped up onto it, seating herself on the edge with her knees apart and her hands resting idly on the ledge between them. She wasn't without some color in her cheeks, but her piercing gaze was steady and entirely expectant.

"Well?" she asked when he didn't break the silence. "Are we going to do it or not?"

There were no words for how he felt about the sheer _pragmatism_ in her question.

Even if she wasn't in the habit of flinching at trouble (or life-threatening danger, for that matter), he didn't think it was unreasonable to expect her to flinch at _sex._

...Sex with a man who was her trusted mentor and almost twice her age, no less. Didn't she... _care?_

Whatever she saw in his face had her making a face of her own. "Unless you'd rather we starve here."

If it would only be him starving, he might have honestly considered it, but Daine was trapped too, and she—

...Did not technically _need_ his interference ( _assault,_ his mind corrected) to power the array. He blinked slowly, then said, "As I said, technically I'm irrelevant here. It might take a bit longer, but you could..." He trailed off, unable to bring himself to say any of the appropriate ( _ha_ ) words.

She looked at him like he was an idiot. "Could what? Can't canoodle with myself,"

A slew of images that involved Daine 'canoodling with herself' flickered through his brain, and he shoved them back before he could get much farther than _thighs clenching and shifting around a thin wrist slotted between them_ (ice water or no, the thought still set him on _fire,_ and he _hated_ himself for it), then stared at the much more enduring version of the girl sitting three yards away.

Much more enduring and much more _oblivious,_ to judge by the degree of incomprehension she displayed.

"You..." he started, then stopped, because really, what _could_ he follow that with.

Daine, for her part, just continued to regard him from her position on the stone altar, half baffled and half curious.

Eventually, he decided that if he was going to ask his student about her, _gods,_ masturbation habits, he'd rather not do it from the other side of the room.

He took off his cloak as he walked (admirably normally, considering the... _circumstances_ ), and when he arrived in front of her, he draped it around her shoulders. The inside of the temple was downright warm in comparison with the late November weather outside, but that didn't mean it was precisely comfortable.

She gazed at him, her endless blue-grey eyes and long, thick, dark eyelashes suddenly much closer ( _dangerously_ close) with the height the altar had given her. Their faces were nearly on a level like this—which somehow made it even _more_ noticeable that she'd relaxed and straightened with his proximity. Those 'lashes fluttered faintly as she accepted the cloak, her blush deepening, the ghost of a smile on her face that was as trusting as it was nervous.

...She _didn't_ care, did she. Not that he was her mentor, not that he was twice her age, not any of it.

She thought they were going to have sex and her only response was to blush and smile.

It wasn't hunger or need, but she obviously didn't find the idea distasteful. She wasn't good enough a liar to hide it from him when they were this close, and she wouldn't lie about something like this anyway.

Suddenly, discussing this with her was much, much easier.

"It's not intercourse that the spells are powered by," he clarified, looking at her now, "just pleasure, even if it's you pleasuring yourself. It may not be as powerful, but I'll find somewhere else to be and give you privacy."

(And then, once they got out, find privacy for himself, praying none of her friends decided to tattle on him, because _Hag take him_...)

She was the one looking away from him this time, embarrassment tightening her mouth even as she caught his sleeve to keep him there. "I... can't. I know other girls do it, but I never—" She paused, considered her words, then amended, "—almost never saw any use for it myself."

...Ah.

There weren't many words for how he felt about possessing the knowledge that Daine rarely touched herself, either, but he certainly felt _something._

(Daine's mild disinterest in sex and romance had been a relief when the boys started _really_ chasing her—he knew she'd had relationships, but her bemused shrug and _they're well enough, I s'pose_ hadn't inspired a great deal of faith in her beaus—but 'relief' wasn't the emotion he was feeling now. Shame, guilt, protectiveness, possessiveness, worry, a truly loathsome amount of _hunger,_ maybe, but not relief.

Oh, he could _ruin_ her.)

Neither of them spoke while he took that in, though Daine flushed further into a soft shade of rose. He ruthlessly crushed back the split-second fantasy of feeling the heat of that color with his lips.

"The alternative is my help," he felt the need to point out.

"Well!" she said, jerking to face him, embarrassed into exasperation. "I'll be blessed!"

 _I won't,_ Numair thought, then reached up to cup her cheek and felt her breathing stutter. The burn of her blush was just as enchanting as he'd thought it would be, the widening and darkening of her eyes much moreso.

He might have to work for this a bit, but he knew he could. If she didn't _object_ to him, then it would be a simple matter of... of...

Of indulging in guilty fantasy after guilty fantasy after guilty fantasy and pretending it meant nothing to him.

There was no way he was going to be able to pretend, he realized with a sinking feeling. If he kissed her—

She'd know. There would be no way she _wouldn't_ know. If not his whole heart—and it _would_ be his whole heart, he knew that—then the... _physical_ aspect of his attraction would be unavoidable. It already was, and he was grateful for the altar hiding his groin from her sight now that his cloak wasn't; she very much did not need to clue in to just how much the thought of intimacy with her affected him.

_Mithros._

"You're really su—" he started, tongue heavy and desperate.

"Numair." Something in her voice made him look at her, and only her. At the expression in those sky-blue-steel-grey eyes, everything else vanished. She didn't say anything beyond that, but she placed her slight, sturdy hand over the hand cupping her cheek, held it, and turned her head to place a solemn kiss on the heel of his palm.

Numair exhaled slowly. He hadn't even realized that he'd been holding his breath.

"Fair silly to starve here when we needn't," she remarked softly, smiling. "Kiss me?"

He might have kissed her right then even if she hadn't asked, and that was where all the trouble lay.

 _Goddess,_ she was _lovely._

He leaned in until their noses brushed and watched her smile start to wobble around the edges, turning vulnerable with the proximity. "You are _far_ too composed," he informed her in a murmur, then thumbed her cheek and slanted his mouth over hers.

It was everything he'd feared and worse.

It was the crackle and heat of attraction, slow and heavy in his veins—that was what he'd known about. That was what he'd been afraid of. He was all too aware that the low, desperate groan sitting in the back of his throat was too many octaves below her high, breathy gasp. She was _innocent_ and his affection for her... wasn't.

(She was _so young,_ she was his _student,_ she _trusted_ him and he looked at her and thought things about her she could never know about.

And here she was, about to know them.)

He hadn't known how much of a relief it would be to kiss her, though. He hadn't known how much it would feel like coming home. Like something he'd been waiting for for far longer than he could have been—and something he'd been familiar with for just as long.

He knew her body, her voice, all her little signals in ways he wasn't supposed to on a first kiss. He knew her, inside and out, and every shiver and mewl was just filling in the gaps in his knowledge, the shape of the holes just as familiar as everything else about her. He hadn't known the taste of her mouth or the softness of her lips or the hitching puffs of breath fluttering against his cheek, but they all slotted right into place, right where they were supposed to be.

He pulled her close while hardly realizing it, hooking his hands under her knees and pulling her to the edge of the stone in one smooth motion when she started to squirm, placing himself between her legs. She went with an ease that _buzzed_ in the space between his ears for a moment— _gods_ she was flexible—and then she shuddered and arched and crossed her calves over the small of his back and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he had other things demanding his attention.

She tugged his hair tie free, combing his hair and stroking his nape and sending _electricity_ dancing through his system, her satisfied sigh vibrating against his lips, and he carded his fingers through her hair, too. It tangled around his fingers when he buried his hand in it ( _don't tug, she's sensitive_ ) and he could feel her heart thrumming through her back, pounding just as fast as his own.

He tilted his head away, panting and foggy, and she _whined,_ needy in a way that hit him like a punch to the gut, and then he was right back on her mouth, half of his own will and half by the way her arms tightened, her grip pulling at the hair at the base of his skull.

He lost some unnameable sum of time to her lips and the press of her body, seared to the bone and weak all over, and then tried to pull back again.

'Tried' because she breathed a little _oh_ that went straight to his groin, and then chased him, the faintest brush of her lips demanding a much more thorough re-exploration.

"Daine," he croaked on the third attempt, because he couldn't breathe, and maybe there had been something important they were supposed to be doing, and he couldn't summon up a single coherent thought around the intoxication of the taste-feel-scent-sound of her.

She reluctantly heeded the command buried in his voice, dropping her head sideways onto his shoulder and panting as she trembled.

It took him a second to cobble what was left of his senses back together, and when he did, he breathed a short laugh. He'd really thought he would have to _work_ for this. "Magelet, if this is 'well enough' to you, I do have to wonder at your standards."

She shivered, her nails scratching at the juncture between neck and shoulder as her fingers curled. "Nn-... It's never felt like _that_ before."

...Oh.

The breathless wonder she said it with—like this (like _he_ ) was a _revelation_ —stroked between his ears and right down his spine, cool and velvety and utterly _devastating._

Dazed, he turned his head and tilted hers for another kiss, simple and sweet and borderline-chaste. He didn't think he could take anything more intense than that.

The stone was sunlit-warm when he braced himself on it, and he could see the runes only barely starting to show up against its grey surface when he cracked open an eye to look—the physical, tangible, inarguable _proof_ of how much she was enjoying this (how much he was doing it for her) flowed through him like a stuttering aftershock.

It was with that knowledge that he numbly tugged his cloak aside from where it had pooled around her hips and pushed himself up onto the stone.

Daine clung to him, tightening both arms and legs around him until she was lifted off the stone entirely, leaving him her space to fill—heavy and grounding and unreal in how close she wanted, _chose_ to be—

(Was it really that surprising? Or had he just convinced himself it was impossible so he wouldn't move forward? Standoffish as she could be, she always responded to his touch like an amiable feline. She was affectionate with him like she was with no one else. If she was the one person he couldn't stand to lose, then the feeling was mutual. That didn't count for nothing.)

He wadded the cloak and put it behind her head so he could press her into the stone without hurting her.

* * *

* * *

* * *

OUTLINE/ADDITIONAL NOTES/BRAINSTORMING:

\- TBA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100 words of religious sex rituals (....maybe? idk i feel like i got away from the point here)
> 
> TBA (S P R I N G C L E A N I N G)


	4. sex tutoring take #1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> increasingly transparent attempts to deny that platonic sex-tutoring is actually just sex (canon divergence/no immortals war AU) (underage)

Daine, on the whole, wasn't a particularly amorous person. If she'd found a new love after she lost interest in Jon, she could have fooled Numair.

That was much more of a relief than it wasn't. Dealing with the realization that he was completely gone on his sixteen-year-old student was difficult enough on its own—if he'd had to watch her pine for someone else, he may well have quietly lost his mind.

He knew she had admirers (and had from the very start; the slow transformation from fey girlchild to lovely ( _stunning_ ) young woman had never left her wanting for beauty), but they may as well have been manure for how much attention she paid them.

Which made her current proposition all the more surprising.

"You want to... _what?"_ he asked, strangled.

Daine set her chin, looking thoroughly mortified and equally unwilling to back down. "Try canoodling," she said, with a certain amount of regal certainty that made him want to die inside, then considered that and rephrased, "Try having sex." Then, "Bed someone."

He could almost feel her scraping years off his lifespan with every word she spoke.

They were in his rooms after supper; he had been idly perusing one of his bookcases for reading material and reorganizing some of the more hastily-reshelved tomes when Daine had wandered in and taken possession of his settee and forgotten novel, looking tense and distracted. One entirely unwitting inquiry as to what was troubling her, and here they were.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Putting 'Daine' and 'sex' into the same thought stirred a variety of feelings he'd rather not identify—especially not outside of the privacy of a darkened bedroom. _"Why?"_

"Curiosity," she said crisply. Then the dignity caved to sheepishness and embarrassment. "I seem to be the only one among my friends who hasn't so much as tried it. Many of them seem to enjoy it a great deal. I want to know what all the fuss is about."

It was such an utterly normal reason for a teenager to want to have sex that Numair almost felt betrayed. He had never been under the impression that she was above it all, exactly, but she had skipped past so many normal teenage trials and tribulations in her practicality that he felt that this should really have been one of them, for the sake of his health if nothing else.

"And you're telling me this because...?"

She looked at him like he was an idiot—and maybe he was, but 'Daine' and 'sex' were two concepts he was still struggling not to connect, so maybe he could be forgiven for being a little slow on the uptake—then, when it became apparent he wasn't going to get there on his own, she said, "So you can teach me."

First his mind went to a very, _very_ hands-on sort of teaching, and then landed on the knowledge that that was exactly what the court gossips _thought_ he was doing from the start and it was absolutely _despicable_ of him to even think of it, and then skittered past that to what she was (probably) actually asking (that is, a lesson that went the way most of their lessons went—lectures and questions and books), to which his first answer was, _no,_ because that would require thinking about Daine and sex in far too much detail for polite company, and his second answer was, "I'll... get you a book. Find one. For you. We haven't gone over human anatomy, but... what?"

She was still looking at him like he was an idiot; now the expression was tinged with amused asperity. "I don't think I can learn this from a _book,_ Numair."

That took several long seconds to process, during which the concepts of 'Daine' and 'sex' connected rather thoroughly and bloomed pure _heat_ throughout his entire body, but finally he arrived at, "You... want me to teach you _how_... sex... works. Physically. As in..."

"Yes," she said, clear and formal to combat her evident embarrassment.

"No. Absolutely not."

Her blush darkened even as her chin set harder. "Why?"

 _Of course_ she couldn't just take him at his word. He turned back to the bookshelf—it was much easier to look at than her. (Her soft mouth and limpid eyes and graceful figure that she was coming into more and more every day—) "Must you really ask?"

Her silence said that yes, she really must.

"Because it would be highly inappropriate," he said with rather more patience than he felt. "Even if you _weren't_ my student, you are still sixteen, and I am..." He decided he'd rather not say 'thirty' out loud. "...not."

She folded her arms, accidentally emphasizing slender curves and looking distinctly unimpressed. "So?"

It _figured_ that this would be where her common sense—or maybe experience, come to think of it—failed her. He scrubbed his face and sighed. "Sex is something you should be figuring out with people your own age, Daine. Not... _being taught_ by older men who _will_ be taking advantage of your innocence, whether they intend to or not."

(Reasons he repeated to himself over and over when their faces ended up just a little too close together and he could swear her breath caught, when she shamelessly snuggled into his hugs with laughter that might be more fluttering than it ought to be, when she was playing in the ocean with her shift soaked and plastered to her soft skin in ways that haunted his days and an adoring ( _trusting_ ) smile that haunted his dreams...

...Reasons he gave up repeating to himself in the middle of the night when the itch in his veins was nigh unbearable, feeling like a villain as he touched himself replaying her most defenseless moments in his mind.)

"Well, that's silly," said Daine with all the practicality of a draft horse.

"What?" he said, startled into looking up.

She gave him a bland look. Her arms were still folded. "Bad enough that one of us is blind, but both? It seems to me that it would be daft for _nobody_ to know what they're doing."

"Sex is—different," he fumbled, glancing away and feeling a blush creep over his face.

"Is it?" she said dubiously.

"It's—" _vulnerable,_ he would have said, if he hadn't known that that was exactly why she'd come to him. _Intimate,_ he would have said, if he hadn't known she wouldn't understand just how much so. _Passionate,_ he would have said, if he hadn't known that going down that road would mean he'd have to look her in the eye and tell her he didn't want her. He exhaled on a groan and switched tracks to, "Why _me?_ You certainly have enough eager admirers to choose from." Far more than enough, really. "Some of them likely even have experience."

She was silent for long enough that he thought she was reconsidering—which was a whole other tempest of mixed feelings—but he didn't have the time to identify them all before fabric shifted; she had moved from folding her arms to hugging herself. When he looked at her dead on, her eyelashes had lowered in an unusual show of timidity.

"If it's you... I know you'll stop if I ask you to stop."

That brought him up short.

Indeed, he would stop if she wanted him to stop. Chances were that she wouldn't even need to say it—he knew sex and he knew Daine, and he would be paying attention for her discomfort all the same—but...

"You have no faith that your admirers would do the same?"

The corner of that soft mouth tugged to the side wryly. "Sometimes I have to kick their shins to let me go. Seems to me it would be a bit harder to kick someone's shins while they're in the middle of poking you."

 _"Please_ don't use euphemisms," Numair said quickly, wincing—the image of _Daine being 'poked'_ was at once much too evocative, stomach-turningly crass, and incredibly disturbing. "Just say se— you have to _what."_

All Daine had to offer was an indifferent shrug.

He _knew_ he should have quietly disposed of Perin back at Midwinter.

(That indifference suggested rather worrying things about her history with sex and romance generally—history he had by all rights been there to _witness_ and should have caught at the start; why on earth hadn't she ever suggested that anything was wrong?—but her dispassion could well be why she'd brought this to her mentor who was only a few years short of _old enough to be her father,_ rather than a boy her own age who she was actually _attracted_ to.

It didn't make him feel any _better_ about any of it, but at least that part of the situation had an explanation.)

He sighed explosively and scrubbed his face again, profoundly uncomfortable in his skin, and opened his mouth to—insist she could go without this particular experience, demand a more thorough explanation of what she'd meant by that, ask for a list of names of all who had touched her after she told them to stop, _something_ —

"Please, Numair?" she said, cutting him off with a rare note of actual pleading in her voice.

He shut his mouth. There were a hundred, a thousand _very good reasons_ why he couldn't say yes, but hearing his name in that tone had quite handily removed his ability to say no.

He made the mistake of looking at her—her face was sweet and open and hopeful, her plea echoed in sky-and-steel eyes framed by long, thick eyelashes, invitingly soft lips parted just slightly—and found himself saying, "Fine."

She _lit up_ from the inside out, delight making those eyes sparkle as she wriggled and sat up straighter in her seat, and his vague idea of taking it back or adding stipulations evaporated like the morning mist.

She really was _much_ too happy about something that was about to involve fucking him.

He rubbed his forehead with another sigh, saying, somewhat bitterly, "I suppose I'm now to plan a curriculu—" then nearly swallowed his tongue, because Daine had pulled the thong that held the badger claw out of her shirt...

Which was now accompanied by a gold chain and a pregnancy charm.

"You... came prepared," he said weakly, because seeing contraception around a woman's neck held several rather _visceral_ associations for him.

Suddenly 'having sex with Daine' no longer felt like a mere (if much-craved) theoretical.

She dropped both charms back into her shirt and looked horribly, wonderfully expectant.

"I haven't planned a curriculum," he tried, though the words came out even weaker than before. That look had sent a fission of pure, tingling _heat_ to his groin, and it was only growing by the second.

It occurred to him as he said it that that suggested may be crossing a line—if nothing else, 'formalized teaching' and 'sexual intercourse' were two streams he _really_ shouldn't mix, for the sake of professional integrity alone ( _ha,_ as if he could even dream he was about to have any of that left)—but Daine was already bare and melting into him in his mind, and the idea that he really could put _anything_ in that 'curriculum' and she might do it on faith alone was horrifying and shameful and all the more horrifying and shameful for the thread of temptation that wove throughout it.

He was _exactly_ the kind of man he had tried to warn her against, wasn't he.

"Do you need one?" she asked, mild and curious and clothed and real, her stunning eyes following him without judgement.

"Well... no," he conceded, resolutely pretending he couldn't already feel her body in his hands, all supple flesh and lithe flexibility and virgin sensitivity. He kneaded his left palm with his right thumb, trying to ground out the fantasy while he breathed around the hot clench of desire in his gut that just wound tighter and tighter. "It just raises the question of where to start."

( _Where to start,_ like he was already undressing her in his mind—which he was and then some, but was it truly necessary for _her_ to know that?)

She shrugged, her hands loose in her lap (so _close_ to that sweet apex of her thighs, curtained out of sight by her tunic). "I know there's kissing and pok-... sex, and things with hands and mouths that people never bothered to explain properly." She made a face, pretty features vividly expressive. "I never understood the mouths part—you just... lick someone's bits? How does that work out nice for anyone?"

His mind happily supplied him with the image of her lips wrapped around his shaft in the same moment it supplied him with the scent and taste of her muff, the pull of a gentle suck and roll of a hot tongue to go with a loud keen as she rutted against his face and pulled his hair hard enough to hurt.

"Many people enjoy it," he said mildly, once he could summon words again. His face and neck were flushed crimson, he knew, and no amount of restless shifting would release the pressure in his groin.

"So we should start there," she said with a little nod, like it was decided just like that.

"No." Teaching her to suck his cock would damage him in ways that could never, ever be recovered from.

She shot him a sour look that he tried desperately not to take as her reaction to being denied the opportunity and failed spectacularly.

He took a deep breath, then let it go. Thinking about it logically ( _logic,_ he thought despairingly, _like any of this could be considered logical at all, in any universe_ ), you started sex with foreplay. That... that was as good a place to start at any, right? In theory, he might not have to bed her at all—if she figured out just how _intimate_ intimacy could be, she would likely decide that she didn't want this after all.

...Every ounce of his very being rebelled against that thought, but that didn't stop it from being _true._

He rubbed the side of his nose and took the three steps that separated them, making sure to circle around behind the back of the settee so she wouldn't have a front row seat to just how tight his breeches had gotten.

Once there, he rested his elbows on the wooden frame and reached out to touch her cheek, cautiously brushing the velveteen apple of her cheek with his fingertips to see how she reacted to that—

She leaned into his touch without hesitation, pressing into his hand until he was cupping her face fully, her gaze guileless and curious and excited. There was a pretty blush starting to touch her cheeks; he could feel the heat of it against his palm.

He swallowed. Hard. Even after clearing his throat, his voice still rasped when he said, "I suppose, ideally... we should start at the beginning."

For inane as the words were, she didn't retort—just dropped her eyes to his mouth with a glow of heat.

He didn't even realize he was leaning down to kiss her until her eyes flicked up to meet his in the split second before they met, and he found that she'd risen to meet him halfway.

One, two, three, four spine-tingling, _breathtaking_ strokes—flint, steel, spark, kindling—and then Daine exhaled the sweetest _oh..._ he'd ever heard in his life, and it felt like he'd let slip a flashflood of fire magic like he hadn't done since he was a child.

He drew back for a moment, dizzily wondering if he'd accidentally incinerated his rooms, and then Daine wound her arms around his neck and buried her fingers in his hair and pulled him back into the kiss, and the thought disappeared, right along with the rest of the world in its entirety.

Her mouth was even softer than the promise it had held, utterly beguiling in its vulnerability and warmth and welcome, and her curls were silken in that stage between damp and fully dry. Her skin held the rare scent of faint perfume and her tongue tasted of a freshener—she'd prepared for this.

She had _prepared_ for this, even beyond simply bringing her pregnancy charm, had scrubbed and sweetened herself with the intent of making sure he wanted her. That realization was far more arousing than it had any right to be.

When they finally broke for air, the room was spinning, his off hand was clutching the frame of the settee so hard it almost hurt, and Daine's eyes had gone glassy, her cheeks darkened to a passion-deep shade of rose.

"Well?" he croaked between pants. "What do you think?"

(What she _should_ say was, _I understand. That was enough. Thank you, Numair._ What he desperately _needed_ her to say was that it was good, that she wanted more, that she wanted to settle into his embrace and never, ever leave—)

Her thick, dark eyelashes fluttered for a moment, her heady gaze fixing on his mouth, and then she gulped and whispered, "I... I think I sh-should have been much eagerer to try canoodling if all kissing was like... like that."

...Ah.

Now he really _was_ going to incinerate his rooms.

(The implication that he was the first that had made her feel like that, even though he _knew_ she'd had encounters before...)

It took him several breaths after that to remember how his knees worked, but then, numbly, he stepped around the back of the settee so he could drop down next to her, only barely managing not to stumble as he did so. As soon as he was at her level, he found himself with a lapful of an indeed very _eager_ Daine, who was wriggling to seek out every point of contact she could.

He settled her so she was straddling his thigh as he reclined, one hand set firmly above the knee between his legs to keep her from accidentally abusing his bits (and from finding out just how hard he was from the taste of her mouth and her words alone) and the other on her hip to steady her as she pressed the whole hot line of her body against his side, her belly and breasts and thighs absolutely _tantalizing_ in all their lithe softness.

She rested her forehead against his for a moment, tightening her arms around his neck and rubbing their noses together, a meltingly sweet gesture given in just that _way_ of hers, before her lips sealed over his again.

He couldn't swallow his groan at what it felt like to _finally_ have her in his arms like this—the fullness of it, the bone-deep hum of satisfaction and desire, the pure physicality of the contact—and she _shivered,_ a melodious sigh on her breath as she rocked into him slowly.

He ignored the not-insignificant part of him that begged to pin her down and push aside her clothing until those new curves of hers were defenseless to his mouth and hands, until he could kiss and suckle and touch and tease until she was ready to beg for his cock buried inside her. Instead, he held her steady so she could explore him at her own pace.

The longer they kissed, the more she trembled, her hips hitching and rutting against his thigh and a litany of sighs and stuttering gasps breathed against his lips, and he was dizzy with the heat of it in seconds. Her position meant that he could _feel_ the muscles around her quim clenching and fluttering when he found that she liked her lower lip nibbled and her tongue gently sucked, and if that wasn't the headiest thing he'd ever known, he couldn't remember anything that beat it.

She let him guide her movements into a steadier rhythm, the slow roll a horrible tease all on its own, every last inch of him _begging_ her to do that exact same thing against his hips while he was sheathed inside to feel every millimeter of friction—he raised his knee so she could grind better and took as many deep breaths as his lungs and her lips would let him.

He noticed her little moans as she moved (high and sweet and breathy and just surprised enough that he was about to _lose his mind_ ), noticed the flex of her hands (in his shirt, in the hair just above his nape, the lightning in his system hitting different tenors for each), noticed the clench of her abdomen (the reminder he didn't need of just how _close_ they were, how it didn't matter that he only had a hand on her hip and her knee; he could feel every last inch of her anyway), but it was a shock when her rhythm stuttered to a stop as she ground down on his thigh.

She ripped her mouth away from his with an _oh!_ that was halfway to a yelp, then buried her face in his shoulder and clung to him for dear life.

He caught her and held her, the space between his ears _ringing_ as she whimpered and keened through wave after wave of shuddering completion, and then went completely and utterly lax, panting heavily into the crook of his neck as the aftershocks rippled through her quim against his thigh.

Right. Virgin sensitivity. He hadn't— She didn't— Had she _ever_ —?

...Now he knew what she sounded like when she came. Now he knew what it felt like to have her shake apart in his arms. Now he _knew_ —

And he was just going to have to deal with _having_ that knowledge for the rest of his life.

_Mithros._

He was going to be dreaming about this for months. Years, maybe. Maybe longer.

If his heart didn't give out first.

She had melted into him that way that was entirely unique to afterglow—a notable, _enchanting_ contrast to the rock-hard tension that had taken over his body, her deep panting to go with the shallow breaths his lungs would allow when all of his effort was going into not spending himself on the spot.

Her body started to calm long before his did.

"Oh," she said between pants, the noise shivery and decadent and bemused.

It didn't help.

(There was a degree of surprise in the statement that said even more about her inexperience than he'd previously known, and he hated himself for being as affected as he was by it in the _way_ he was by it.)

Another few seconds passed, and then she murmured, "Numair?"

He _shuddered_ from head to toe at the sound of his name, then swallowed convulsively.

(She was thinking of him, had _been_ thinking of him, had surrendered herself to him and _only_ him—)

She eased back, giving him a look of hazy concern. "Are you okay?"

He didn't look at her; if he met her eye now, it would undo him. Instead, he stared at the ceiling and blinked the stars out of his eyes. "I don't believe I've ever been this aroused in my life," he said faintly.

He could feel her stare at the side of his face, concern replaced by a downright insulting degree of genuine bafflement. "...Huh?"

"I'm not sure if you noticed, but a beautiful young woman just pleasured herself in my lap," he got out through gritted teeth,. He still wasn't looking at her—he already felt plenty topsy-turvy without any extra help. He heard his voice gain an edge of desperate plea—"Did you think I was made of _stone?"_

Which was an unfair question, given that he'd been doing everything in his power to convince her that yes, he _was_ made of stone, but _gods..._

She shifted to sit up straighter, and ended up with _his_ face buried in _her_ shoulder this time, his arms tightening around her for balance. The room was simply spinning too hard. "I'm not—made of stone, I mean," he said, half because explaining things to Daine was an ingrained habit too deep to break and half because talking was the only thing that was keeping him off the edge. "I am most assuredly very, _very_ morta— _ghfck!"_

He cut off with an undignified noise at the feeling of Daine dropping her hand between his legs, her palm _burning_ hot through the linen as she cupped him.

Even through the pure _rush_ of that touch, he couldn't miss her delicate gasp, or the way she clenched and squirmed against his thigh, like the very feel of it excited her, before letting her legs loosen and spread slightly in unconscious invitation. She hesitated a moment, then inhaled a short, nervous little breath and undid the laces with hands far steadier than his.

Then she actually _touched him,_ and he had to lock his lungs for a moment, flailing out with his magic to activate his silencing wards with a _slam_ before letting out a very, _very_ telling, loud, mangled moan.

She had a lady's hands—slight, small, graceful—but they were a fighter's and a worker's hands too, archery callouses beaten into soft submission and palms maintained with lotions he'd given her himself, the strength and power they held evident in her gentleness, and he was finding the contrast of it much, much, _much_ more attractive than he could have ever guessed.

"Oh, Numa-a-air," she breathed against his ear, shy and nervous and sweet and singsong, and he shuddered again, a whimper in his throat and a gasp on her lips as his member jumped in her hand.

She stroked him once, gentle to the point of _agony._

Stars flashing in his eyes all over again and his whole body lightningstruck, he clutched her hand at the base of his cock, and then, as he _finally_ the right pressure, the last threads of his self-control _snapped._

He half thrust, half pumped her hand up and down his shaft like she was a mere accessory, desperate to the point of barely caring—once, twice, and then her hand tightened to the pressure, pumping him herself so good he was certain he really _was_ going to die—

Three more of those and he came much harder than he ever had in his life.

He knew he blacked out for a moment, the post-coital rush needing several seconds to sink in and bowl him over, but so it did, and resisting the absolute _need_ to kiss her that followed was a difficult fight.

She was so soft, _so_ soft—worn fabric and sweat-damp skin, pliant curves and loose curls, the purely _feminine_ timbre of her voice, trembling and unguarded, trusting him without reservation to keep her safe in her most vulnerable moments—

(Sometimes it occurred to him that she loved him in ways that had never been in doubt. For the first time since that fatal moment in which he'd realized he wanted more than she could ever give him, her faith in him didn't seem like a catastrophic mistake.)

"Well," he croaked when he had even a modicum of control over his mouth again. "That was embarrassing."

"Was it?" she wondered, sounding like she didn't agree in the least, and he laughed shortly, even though the gooey warmth that the sentiment shot through him.

"You'll find you want a man who can hold out long enough to give you pleasure, magelet," he said dryly, then dropped his head back to try to catch his breath. "We're a bit more— _limited_ than you ladies are. _You_ can go until you are tired. We get to go once or twice, and need breaks between."

She breathed a little hum of understanding, then pulled her hand away to study it—or, rather, the release that coated her fingers.

Shame-heat-guilt-shame- _heat_ flooded him at the sight (pink cheeks and long eyelashes and innocent curiosity about the obscenity dripping down her wrist), and he faltered over it for a moment before thinking to call a towel for her from his linens supply.

She watched him placidly as he cleaned it up, then blushed and shifted when he kissed her knuckles when he was done. (If smothering her in affection was out of the question, then at lest he could have this.)

Then, impulsively, he flipped her hand over and kissed her wrist—and earned a much more pronounced squirm and a gorgeous deepening of her flush.

"Not done?" he said, like he needed her to confirm it when it was written all over her face—

She gave him a blank look. "'Done'?"

Deliberately, he rested his free hand on her thigh and slid it upwards, slow and heavy, and watched her pupils dilate, only the beginning of a realization sparking in her eyes.

...She didn't have the first clue about any of this, truly, and here he was, pushing her into saying it aloud for the sake of his ego.

"Just because I can only go once doesn't mean you have to," he said with a faint smile, like it meant nothing to him. Like he was doing her a _favor_ when he knew she wasn't experienced enough to know why he should stop, why he should ease off and let her adjust to what had just happened. "Half of learning about sex is learning about what is most pleasurable for _you,_ too. It takes two, after all."

(It was a paltry excuse and he knew it. He _wanted_ her helpless and relying on him. He _wanted_ to ruin her for everyone else. He _wanted_ her to think of him with a shudder and a blush and a catch of breath as she relived all that he'd done to her.)

She nodded, just as open and willing to learn as she was when he dropped an encyclopedia on avian species in her lap, because in three years, not once had he betrayed her trust.

( _Will be taking advantage of your innocence whether they intend to or not_ indeed.)

He cupped her face and drew her into a kiss so he wouldn't have to look at her.

They ended up with her back to his chest, his hands all over with a token excuse of letting her adjust to being touched that felt like the most transparent not-quite-lie he could have possibly told. Her breasts were dwarfed by his palms, her sharp gasp _heady_ when his thumbs found her nipples through her layers of clothing, her slim curves intoxicating for the way the fabric of her tunic clung and smoothed over them, a taste of ruination on his tongue when he finally dipped a hand under her and cupped her hot mound through her breeches.

(He never had been able to decide if breeches were more or less enticing than skirts. On one hand, knowing the exact physique of a lady's lower body could be more than a bit distracting. On the other hand, skirts were much more convenient at times like these.)

"So, what _do_ you like, magelet?" he murmured conversationally over her shuddering intake of breath. He pushed the middle seam _in_ until he knew it parted her outer lips, and _oh_ she _whimpered._ "How do you want me to touch you?"

She shook her head helplessly, replying, "I don't— I don't—" with words slurred and mangled by lust, just like he'd known she would—he was asking her questions he _knew_ she didn't have the answers to purely for the sake of his ego, and he wasn't sure when one of her patron gods would smite him for it, but the feeling that they should have done that long ago wasn't keeping him from doing it.

"Then we'll find out," he said, and she nodded unsteadily, relaxing in his grip, trusting to the very last, and he was the very _lowest_ of the low.

He mapped her by touch, the exact shape of her outer lips and the placement of her clit, massaging the area until he found the pressure and patterns that made her quiver and mewl, the sound and feel and _intimacy_ of it all sending tingles down his spine.

Again, it took almost no time at all before she came, her stuttered half-words coalescing into a cry of, _"Numair!"_ as she clamped her thighs around his hand and shuddered.

The fabric under his fingers was damp from the focused stimulation, his mouth was drier than the Great Southern Desert, and he was fully hard again, the heavy _jolt_ of his name on her lips impossible to ignore.

[A/N: okay so i kinda gave up here and i was trying so hard to go for ~teh edgie~ that i'm not really satisfied with what i ended up.

from here, daine was going to call him on hiding something from her  
numair: ...i'm afraid i'd very much like to ruin you for anyone else  
daime: oh, well _you_ think quite well of yourself, don't you  
numair, rubbing circles on her clit while she writhes: so i do  
daine: ......j-justifiably, i _guess_

and from there? i blanked :') i _don't_ think it would have ended in PIV sex. there was a faint thought of daine sucking him off but i didn't have any clear plans on how to get there.

this was originally written for the prompt "increasingly transparent attempts to deny that platonic sex-tutoring is actually just sex" (the essence of which i pulled off much better, though rather less explicitly, [here, in the final version of the draft](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28873950)), but i couldn't figure out how to make it follow that path in the time i had, so i dumped the initial conversation and straight to the inspo i had in the first place (which was daine trying to hop on that D immediately and finding that you actually need prep to take one That Big, lol).

putting it in the ground bc... yeah. fun as it was, i'm tired of pushing for The Edge. i can go be edgy somewhere else, some other time.]


	5. excuses, excuses scrapped ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scrapped ending for [excuses, excuses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29516748). (implied underage)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing here is... especially Much (...i think), but the fic its from is borderline pwp, so i'm stuffing it here.
> 
> starts off riiiiiight after onua hangs up, if you want to skim the beginning of the scene.

He idled there for a moment, the car engine humming loud in the silence, and then carefully set his phone down in the cup holder and pulled away from the curb.

It took a minute or two for him to speak again.

"...Nobody seems to think a single thing of you staying alone in an older man's home." It would have been an idle observation if not the darkness laced in his voice.

"Nobody thinks anything of me staying with _you,"_ she corrected. "Quite right of them, too." She looked out at the streetlights flashing by. "You saved me fifty dollars."

He barked a dry, humorless laugh. "Daine—" She swallowed and closed her eyes. "—it's not happening again. This. Between us. I don't know what happened tonight, but I _can't."_

"Not even for fifty dollars?" It was a feeble joke, but she had to say something. Rejection _now_ hurt so much more than it ever could have before.

"Statutory rape fines are _considerably_ more than that, Daine," he said, almost dry over his discomfiture, pressing the gas hard enough to push her back in her seat. It sounded like an excuse.

"I'm not going to be seventeen forever, you know," she pointed out slowly, trying to press through to what the heart of the issue was.

"I'm afraid I don't fancy myself the type of man who counts down the days to a young girl's eighteenth birthday," he snapped, cutting, then muttered a tense, irritable _tch_ as a car switched lanes in front of him. Out of the corner of her eye, Daine saw the speedometer creep up from ten to fifteen miles per hour past the speed limit. He offered no further explanation.

She sank in her seat, chewing over the words as they came to a stop in front of the first red light on their way back.

"...Three hundred and ten days," she finally mumbled.

He frowned and glanced at her sideways. "What?"

"If you change your mind, it's three hundred and ten days 'til my birthday." She glanced at the clock, and it glowed _2:34_ back at her. "Well, three hundred and nine now, I s'pose."

The car drifted forward a few inches as he stared at her, then bounced as he slammed down on the break again. The person behind them honked. "...You keep a count of the days until your eighteenth birthday." It was too flat with disbelief to be a true question.

She shrugged uncomfortably, feeling her cheeks start to heat. "I don't _actually_ want you to go to jail."

The light turned green, and he didn't even seem to notice it, too busy trying to drill a hole through her skull with his eyes alone.

After a long moment, she felt obliged to inform him, "The light is green."

"So it is." He didn't move, to the great frustration of the car behind them.

Eventually the poor driver pulled around them and managed to get through right as the light turned yellow.

"Never mind an age of consent violation, you're going to have a traffic violation at this rate," she said dryly.

"Well, they are vastly less morally questionable, and quite less expensive, too," he said, which _entirely_ missed the point, and finally turned back to the road.

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the ride. The woodsy area surrounding the Conté estate blended into uptown, then into the suburban stretch, then into the slum side of downtown, and then into the upscale side of downtown, then into the ritzy side of downtown, then back into a much cleaner upscale and into the cluster of apartment rises where his home resided.

Silently, he handed her one of his coats before they got out of the car, which she donned quickly, because late March nights were better than some, but still rather frigid.

[A/N: from here, more or less the way the full fic went, though with more Feelings then sexiness—they somehow come to an agreement to do the jailbait wait and exchange vague words about _but what happens if we change our minds_ probably?? idfk man. this whole thing was written in 36 hours. i've barely slept.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yknow how sometimes you force yourself to write a line and end up in a writing fugue that lasts for roughly 36 hours and eats up your life until your brain hurts and your muscles are cramping but _hey at least you did the thing_? yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. That. except i realized 75% of the way through this ending that what i had wasn't doing what i wanted it to be doing, so i yoinked it, HOWEVER it's a solid 600+ words and i'm not letting that go, nosiree.
> 
> dumped because it was too ~aboveboard~ and not enough 'dirty little secret', which was kind of the whole Aesthetic of the fic, and dragging the mood Up at the end wasn't what i wanted to do.


	6. canonverse vampirism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU where everything is the same except Numair is a vampire and blood drinking is hella sexual. (canonverse AU/no established relationship AU) (underage)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the would-be tags:  
> Alternate Universe - Vampire ×  
> Alternate Universe - Canon ×  
> Vampires - feeding is extremely horny for both parties ×  
> In Which Everything is the Same Except Numair is a Vampire ×  
> Mid-The Realms of the Gods ×  
> Blood Drinking ×  
> Coming Untouched ×
> 
> ...yep. still going through [the smut4smut tagset](https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/5637). still loving it.
> 
> AU - this takes place directly after daine's fall off the cliff but assumes that there was no kissing whatsoever involved in the rescue, so numair's magic is still drained. ....i don't know what they said/did in the conversation about the focus, or if they had one at all. ah well.

No matter what the gossips said, Numair had never once bitten Daine.

His refusal was so stout as to be rather inconvenient, actually. It didn't matter if he'd accidentally starved himself by getting distracted by his research and she was the only one around or if they were in the middle of a long, hard journey and he desperately needed the strength her blood could give him—he rebuffed her every offer and held out until they reentered society and he found someone he could pay to bare their (almost always a 'her', not that Daine was paying attention) neck to him.

It wouldn't work here, though, because they were stranded in the Divine Realms and to get out, back to the society that held the working girls he favored, they needed him at full strength, which he was only going to get from blood. _Her_ blood, specifically, because it had to be at least a little bit mortal, and she was the only one of those around.

Her own injuries from her tumble off the cliff had already been seen to, and with Sarra's salves, all but the worst gashes were gone entirely. There was plenty enough salve left to take care of the punctures he was going to leave—really, there was no reason he _shouldn't,_ now more than ever.

She set her hands on her hips as she regarded her friend, who was slumped against the stone wall of the outcropping he'd found for them. His swarthy face was wan and drawn. As good as human food could be as a filler between his true meals, it wasn't going to help him here. _"Now_ will you stop being a dolt and drink?"

He cracked his eyes open, gazed up at her for a moment, then finally ( _finally_ ) gave in. "It seems I have little choice." He didn't sound particularly happy about it, and Daine gritted her teeth for a moment before stalking over to him and plopping herself in his lap. He didn't want her? Fine. It wasn't like _she_ was jumping at the bit here either!

Immediately, he repositioned her so she sat crossways instead of straddling him, pinning her knees together and cradling her back. With a gentle, much more hesitant touch, he coaxed her to wrap her arms around his neck and tilt her head to the side. "It will get... rather intense," he murmured, holding himself away. "I'm... I'm sorry. In advance."

She wanted to snap at him to _just do it already_ , but he preempted her by dropping his face into her neck and inhaling deeply, the tip of his nose brushing the length of the curve. She was keenly aware of just how long it had been since she had had a proper bath.

But whatever he smelled, he didn't seem to find it nearly as objectionable as he seemed to find the concept itself. His lips followed the path of his nose, caressing more than kissing, leaving her skin tingling and sensitive in their wake. His hold on her shifted, pulling her deeper into the embrace and leaving one of his large hands grasping her waist as he parted his lips and lapped at his chosen spot.

Daine squeaked.

She hadn't meant to, but whether it was because her skin had been primed for it, or it was a vampirism thing, or maybe just a Numair thing, the feel of it hit like _lightning_ between her legs.

He pulled away instantly with a worried noise, but she curled her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck and pulled him back in. "It just startled me," she mumbled, her nethers still tingling. "Keep going."

He paused there for a moment, hesitating, then lapped again.

She held on to her gasp this time, though it was a near thing. Being forewarned only meant that it felt less like lightning and more like fire, blooming through her abdomen and thighs and all between in something that was too sharp to be called 'desire' as he continued to lick. She could feel something change as he went, how the spot he focused on felt more and more sensitive in an exclusively pleasurable way the more attention he lavished on it.

Distantly, it occurred to her that maybe his reasons for only ever choosing high-end brothels to feed from were deeper than mere lust.

Her head was hazy with the feeling of having him so close, her limbs weak and her pulse pounding harder and harder between her legs, when he drew back again and blew over the spot, as if to dry it.

"Ready?" he asked, except his voice crackled oddly on it, a strange, low tone she couldn't parse like this. It left her supremely frustrated she couldn't spread her legs.

She shoved back the odd feeling and nodded, because there was no sense in beating around the bush. She was here to be _drunk_ , not licked.

Dipping his head again, he telegraphed the movement, brushing his lips back and forth over the spot, then parting them and letting his fangs copy the motion once, before setting the points against her skin and sinking them in.

There was no force in any of the realms that could have stopped her from moaning then.

She had expected it to hurt, but it didn't. Instead, it was _profoundly_ intimate, the feeling of sharing her body with another, of having Numair pressing into the most vulnerable places she had and knowing that he wouldn't hurt her, that having him there would only feel _good_ , feel right, feel like—

He groaned, long and low, his broad chest vibrating with it, and Daine melted in surrender.

The drinking itself was even more intense. The knowledge that he was getting something he _needed_ from her resonated in her own chest; the touch of his tongue horribly, wonderfully, _incredibly_ stimulating; the feeling of losing herself in his embrace feeding into the overwhelming need in her lower body—it was _heady_. It was all she could do to stay quiet as the sheer pleasure of it teased away layer after layer of shame and reservation.

It got harder the longer he drank, as the need coalesced into desperation, sharpened and glowed and grew and grew and _grew_ —

A quiet cry wrenched from her lips when she hit the peak, release flowing through her like a torrent—though one much kinder and sweeter and gentler than the river beside them—and leaving her half-sated and half-empty, clenching around nothing but desperate for _something_.

He didn't slow, didn't let up, didn't even seem to notice as he carefully drew blood from her, her heart pounding hard enough to rattle her teeth and sting her sex with its force.

Peak and release washed over her twice more before he was done, leaving her limp and weak, clinging to him with so much _need_ between her legs she thought she might die—need that blended with a molten sigh when he pulled back, eyes clear and glowing red in his sensitive face.

He swallowed heavily and licked the matching crimson tinge away from his lips; belatedly, she noticed that he was panting, though not quite as hard as she was. "Bless, magelet."

She shivered in his arms at the sound of his voice, her voice stolen away in the haze of lust.

Blinking, he looked down and studied her as his eyes faded back to their normal dark brown. "Magelet?"

The pet name stroked her nape and settled between her shoulder blades, teasing a sigh from her lungs. "N'mair."

Now truly concerned, he let go of her waist so he could cradle her face. "Did I go too far? I thought—" He frowned deeper. "Daine?"

She shuddered again, then found enough of her wits to answer. "Y- _you_ were the one that said it would b-be... intense." Something told her that changing the pressure on her groin would be a bad idea unless it involved Numair's hands or cock in the changing, so she [A/N: ???????????????????? help]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today is a day for intense bouts of writing followed by intense hatred of concepts and immediate scrapping, apparently.
> 
> from here they'd have a slightly awkward conversation where daine goes 'yep nope just came 3 times ty for that, i guess i know why you only do this with whores now' and numair has a mild aneurysm has to go dunk his head in cold water for a hot minute, because he spent the whole time using every trick in the book to keep himself off the edge and she's just out here coming untouched. (also yes blood drinking usually does end in sex for him)
> 
> there was a faint thought of maybe like... daine being Deeply Frustrated that nobody packed a pregnancy charm for her, except also maybe sarra would have packed one for her, and that would have been funnier!! idfk man, i don't think they'd actually piv-fuck right here and now, unless there was some excuse about sharing power through it?? ....i really didn't think this through huh
> 
> my biggest brainproblem with this one was that it took place _during_ canon and trying to remember their emotional states at this point while working in the themes/rhythm of canon while mentally veering back and forth with what you remember of canon writing and being unable to stomach actually rereading the bit you're trying to write is.... yeah. yeeeeah. anyway!! it had some number of words to it so into the graveyard it goes.


	7. ritual sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Character's Magical Powers Are Kept in Check with Institutionalised Sex Ritual" (canonverse-ish AU)

The room was nicer than Daine expected.

She didn't know what she expected, but there was a long, bench-like wooden table on one side of the room, and a padded cot against the wall on the other. There were pots and tubs pressed together on one side of the table, and a basket of linens next to the bed, and a thick reddish-brown rug covering most of the stone floor. The air was slightly warmer here than the late autumn chill outside, and the rug felt like it had been warmed by a fire before being laid out, though there was no hearth anywhere in the room.

Royal luxury, she supposed. It was nice to have when she'd been stripped of every last bit of cloth and covering and left to wait in her skin alone for what came next.

She wasn't entirely sure what came next, except that it would be sex. They told tales of what the mages in power did during these rituals, how cruel they could be, knowing that the ritual was what was to blame for their impotency. She didn't believe those tales _entirely,_ because the girls they used came back again of their own free will often enough, but that wasn't to say she wasn't nervous.

Wizard Salmalín was one of the most powerful of the lot, too, famous from coast to coast for his victories in both the Immortals War and the Scanran War. Whatever would it take to keep _his_ magic in check?

She didn't get too far into her head worrying about it before the door at the other end of the room opened, admitting a very tall, well-built man with a Tyran tan and a gentle, worried face.

As terribly exposed as she suddenly felt, naked as she was in the presence of a male, the man in question didn't seem to notice her at all. Instead, he went over to the table and started sorting through the pots and tubs with quick movements that sat on the line between deft and frenetic.

Nerves curled tighter and tighter in the pit of her stomach the longer he ignored her—he had moved on to mixing substances and moving aside plates of paints and powders—made worse by the way he nearly vibrated with repressed energy. Occasionally, he would stop to snap his fingers, tight flashes of magic so condensed even _she_ could feel it, and then keep working with slightly more grace.

She wondered if she should call for his attention, but the workings looked fragile enough (and he tense enough) that she didn't want to interrupt.

Finally, he set aside the last of the plates and scrubbed his hands first together, then over his face, then shook himself. After a deep breath, he frowned and looked towards the door she had entered through—and then found her, eyes going wide in alarm.

She raised her chin, unable to fully summon a smile or make herself let go of her chest, but unwilling to show weakness as well.

The man blushed under his tan.

Their eyes locked for a moment, then his lowered to her unclothed chest and crossed arms and skittered away like he'd been shocked—which was rather odd, given that she was here for reasons that involved needing to be bare. Did they bring her to the wrong room?

"They sent you in early," he said weakly. It was a nice voice he had, too, warm and gentle enough to match his face.

"Sorry," she said, for lack of anything better to say. It looked like she was in the right place after all.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, then frowned. "It's cold. Did they not leave you with anything to cover yourself?"

She shrugged, and he frowned deeper, looking to the walls. Runes flickered through the stone, and when they faded, the temperature of the room rose by several degrees, like someone had stoked a hearth back to life. It felt _heavenly._

"My apologies for not noticing you sooner," he said, his eyes darting over her form once before he went back to the table, the knob of throat bobbing as he surveyed his materials. "They were not supposed to leave you like..." He gestured in her direction, flushing again. "...this." Awkwardly, he fiddled with one of the brushes, then set it down with a _clack._ "What is your name?"

"Veralidaine Sarrasri."

[A/N: from here, numair would apologize for her treatment and start preparing her for the ritual (covering her in runes and etc), which also involves oiling/a massage of sorts (not strictly necessary but it's nicer/better for everyone involved if the ritual partner is relaxed and feeling good beforehand). he rambles to her as he works, explaining how it's going to go with daine making the required noises and basically just chilling out and enjoying his hands. through the whole thing he manages to avoid referencing that it's him, specifically—possibly out of embarrassment?

eventually he offers her... basically an aphrodisiac, to make things go better on her end (possibly with less-than-pleasant comedown/side effects?), and she sort of just... holds it and asks him what wizard salmalín is like, and he's like 'wait what'. and then 'lol, i wonder' and they go back and forth wandering around the point until eventually he goes '...well, he's me. also you'll probably want to take that now if you want it to kick in in time for the ritual.' and she just looks at him over her shoulder and goes 'hmmm... nah. i think i'm good. ;)' (because his hands are VERY nice and also he is very kind and yeah this is good) and numair blushes like a goddamn blood moon.

(idk it comes out that numair left the ritual for too long because his last partner couldn't do it anymore (got married? had to move away?) and he was dreading finding a new one ~~except the new girl is stunning _and_ sweet and whoops this is about to turn into a hardcore crush isn't it~~.)

the whole 'they fuck' is one big "¯\\_(ツ)_/¯" thing for me but they _do_ fuck and it goes quite alright and is possibly a bit kama sutraish (i have no fucking idea what kama sutra involves except sex and possibly spirituality and it's possible i should have read a handbook for ideas but ehhhhhh...).

daine packs up and is dressed and paid as per the agreement and they both sort of agree that she should do it again in... however many months is traditional, idk. THEY LIKE EACH OTHER A LOT AND THEIR CHEMISTRY IS GOOD and that's all that's important.

i was gonna leave it implied/in the notes that eventually they have a kid and that turns it from 'this is an incredibly romantic work arrangement' to 'we should absolutely get married, which is totally practical and not something we've both been pining for for years now' to 'wait no these are feelings btw i adore you', BUT YEAH that's how it goes down, basically)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bulletproof exchange tagset delivers again, yeeea boi
> 
> i have accepted that this just isn't happening. i told myself it would happen! but at this point it really isn't and i think i should accept that! sometimes things just don't happen. ~~also i needed a slot for a different project, u kno how it goes~~


	8. BDSMverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daine's mentor doesn't want to be submitted to. Ever. That's... fine, she guesses.

The very first Order Daine received after she came to Tortall wasn't an Order at all.

It was the second day on the road after Numair had joined her and Onua, at dinnertime, when the tall dom beckoned her to the fire where the stew was bubbling and said, "Come. Sit. I think it's just about—Daine?"

At the word 'sit', Daine's legs had promptly folded under her, a headrush of peace and comfort overtaking the sting of her knees, her spine melting and stars swimming in her eyes as she sought out her new friend for further instruction.

He looked thoroughly alarmed (huh?) and Onua swatted him with a rag once she came to investigate.

"You dolt," the woman said, her exasperation genuine, then turned to Daine. "Up, Daine. Don't listen to this one. You're in Tortall now, and you don't need to submit to anyone."

Daine looked to Numair for his input, and found him deeply chagrined.

"Onua has the right idea, Daine," he said gently, going back to the careful phrasing he'd used thus far. Then, slightly firmer, though still without even a touch of his influence, he added, "You're in Tortall now, Submissive or not. You need not drop to your knees for anyone—well, except the king, I suppose. I would kneel for the king, were I you."

Onua swatted him again, but half-heartedly this time. "Yes, it's usually wise to respect royalty."

The not-quite Order had sunk into her hazy mind and stuck there, soothing in its finality. She was in Tortall now, and she need not drop to her knees for anyone but the king.

Then Onua helped her to her feet and handed her a bowl, and Daine was left to sit with that information.

* * *

Whether or not it had been a true Order, she kept the words close to her heart in the weeks-months-years to come.

It felt strange to be told to stand, only kneel when absolutely necessary and never _drop_ for anyone but His Majesty, but she adjusted quickly—and whenever she had trouble keeping to her feet, she replayed Numair's words in her head. Even phrased as gently as it had been, she knew that he hadn't _wanted_ her to submit to just anyone, and that meant the world.

(Later, she learned that his alarm came from his past, in Carthak, where a sub was expected to drop everything to submit on command, and many doms were all too happy to take advantage. He didn't want to be like that, but after so long around Alanna and in King Jonathan's court, he'd forgotten that many subs, especially young ones, would drop on command, influence-touched or otherwise.

What went unsaid but she heard all the same was that, even as early on in their acquaintance as then, he had felt comfortable enough around her to stop guarding his tongue.)

As she got older, it got easier and easier to pick and choose who she would kneel for. She stood under Tristan Staghorn's crushing Order when trying to speak for the Longridge Pack and knelt only with grace when the Emperor of Carthak demanded she drop, and everything less than that was a mere annoyance.

By the time she was sixteen, the only person she still had trouble not submitting for was Numair himself.

She didn't know why it was so hard to keep to her feet around him, but it was. Any sort of command from him made her feel like she was thirteen again, dealing with a new dom for the first time, desperately eager to please in any way she possibly could.

She wouldn't even have minded submitting to him for submission's sake, but Numair never seemed to enjoy being submitted to. She knew even the formal kneeling required for court niceties made him uncomfortable, to speak nothing of people kneeling for him when they _weren't_ required to.

And had told _her specifically_ never to submit to anyone but the king—and meant it, too. She was certain that to submit to him would just make him uncomfortable, and that went against the entire point of submission.

So she braced her wobbly knees when he ruffled her hair or squeezed her shoulder with his large, warm, deft hands. It _ached_ to resist sometimes, left her feeling sick and wrong in herself, but if resistance was what he wanted, then it was resistance that she would give.

It would have been more upsetting [if he hadn't been willing to do any dom things AT ALL but nah it's just the kneeling thing that makes him uncomfortable and he'll still brush her hair and throttle her enemies and it's fiiiiinee]

[A/N:

OKAY SO THIS TIPPED SIDEWAYS INTO WORLDBUILDING but anyway there'd be an info dump-y scene where alanna is talking to daine as they get ready for a party and daine is fussing with her collar (~struggling to put it on~) and she's like NO I'M FINE I GOT IT when first alanna then thayet offer to help her with it, and then numair walks in and she's like "numaaair can you help me put this on 🥺🥺🥺" and alanna&thayet are like "oh i see how it is 😏"

BUT YEAH THE WORLDBUILDING:

  * subs wear collars and doms wear cuffs 
    * there's levels of collars (also probably cuffs but hierarchical stuff u kno how it goes) 
      * there's the very VERY basic "you belong to your country" collar for the reeeeally unaffiliated subs, and then a closer 'fief' type collar that says you belong to your lord (there's one for the castle and that's the one daine has, as a vassal of jon), then another for family circles/lords' houses, and then more closely 'we are immediate family' ones, and then outright 'we're married/partners' collars
    * alanna wears a collar as a sub but it's violet with a lioness on it and george (dom) gave up his mark for hers, rather than the other way around
    * both jon and thayet are doms with variations on the crown's mark—thayet is onua and buri's dom
    * numair's mark is a black cuff with a pretty constellation pattern, and also he's never Had A Sub™ (sexual experience yes, d/s relationship experince... ehhh)
  * anyway, especially with daine being a war hero recently (also... Being Daine, who's like 17/18 at this point and old enough to start really catching responsibility for her words and actions), alanna mentions that it would really be _safer_ for her to have a collar with a closer affiliation, because then the dom could speak on her behalf legally should she get In Trouble, BUT WHO SHOULD IT BE 
    * onua is a sub and alas cannot 😢
    * alanna _would_ except her position is already wobbly with george wearing her mark instead of the other way around and adding another ~~coughtroublemakercough~~ unruly sub to her family probably wouldn't work out very well for anyone 😞
    * thayet is _good_ but are she and daine really close enough for that?? 😉
    * if daine caused a diplomatic incident on jon's time, It Would Be Bad, You Know 😇
    * _gee, who could possibly be left?_ 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
    * and it couldn't be just a casual collar, you know 🤔🤔🤔 the closer the better!! 😇😇😇
  * meanwhile this conversation is pretty much happening over daine's head because numair moved on from fastening her collar ('WOW intimate' gesture) to brushing her hair and fixing it up ('either the sub is too young to do it themselves or the two of you are Literally Married' gesture) and she's just Putty (~and isn't numair's cuff _pretty_.....~ while he casually touches/holds her throat and moves her around and daine is melty & 100% on board with this) while numair is like "guys.... guys....... _it's not like that_..." (IT'S VERY BLATANTLY LIKE THAT™, NUMAIR)



uhhhh something something subs are considered Too Delicate For Hard Work in the northern lands (at least galla/tortall/probably scanra, idk enough about the others to say for sure) and unfortunately often turned into soldiers and slaves in carthak, probably??? treated a bit more evenly in the far south, just because Reasons

also in carthak, it's almost entirely doms who get schooling, so he/ozorne/varice were all doms, and it's considered pretty normal for two doms or two subs to be together/get married where it's much rarer in the northern lands.

ANYWAY BACK TO THE FIC

i'm.... not sure of the hows exactly but it comes out that the only reason daine isn't submitting to numair is because he doesn't seem to want her to and _she's a good girl dammit_ and he's like ".................oh." and then Orders her to drop to her knees and she's like "!!!!!!!! yes this is good ♥♥♥" and he's like "..............................oh." and blushes scarlet (SHE WANTS YOU, YOU IDIOT).

...and then they fuck. ppppossibly with daine sucking numair off and then him later tying her up and eating her out. and, idk, sexploration of the 'pain y/n? n. restraints y/n? BIG Y. breathplay y/n? y.' type.

and daine eventually gets her pretty sparkly constellation collar and is vvv happy with it. and so is numair but you know.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's nothing wrong with this exxxxactly? i've just accepted that i'm never coming back to it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> (okay in hindsight the ending bit is actually pretty weak and this would have gone over a lot better if i'd started out with a firmer idea of how it would go down. ffr, i guess.)


End file.
